Frontiers of Prevention 2023

Welcome to I-GMAP's 2023 International Forum, Frontiers of Prevention

Friday-Saturday, April 14 & 15, 2023

***In Person with Live Streaming***

Since 2017, Frontiers of Prevention, I-GMAP’s annual international forum, has brought academic researchers and prevention practitioners from governments, international organizations, and civil society to Binghamton’s Downtown Campus for two days of conversation, sharing notes and experiences, and forming new professional connections and networks.

Unlike more familiar academic conferences, Frontiers of Prevention has a workshop format. Over the meeting's two days, several extended thematic sessions, without formal presentations, allow participants and audience members to explore topics in depth, to make connections among different thematic panels, and to pursue collaborations and test new ideas.

Frontiers of Prevention Location

Frontiers of Prevention takes place in the Binghamton University Downtown Center (UDC). This is Binghamton's single-building downtown campus, and is not to be confused with Binghamton University's main (Vestal, NY) campus, which is located approximately five miles west of Binghamton, NY. 

UDC Address: 67 Washington St, Binghamton, NY 13902

The conference will be live streamed for those who are not able to attend in person. Please be sure to follow our Facebook, and Twitter pages to stay up to date.

Travel By Air:

The Greater Binghamton Airport (BGM) is currently serviced by Delta and Avelo. Delta offers daily flights to NYC for connections, but times and seats are very limited.

If you are planning to fly on Delta Airlines to Binghamton, the trip via taxi or Uber/Lyft from Greater Binghamton Airport to the University Downtown Center and Conference Hotel should cost around $30.00. 

You may also plan to fly into either Syracuse Airport (SYR) or Ithaca Airport (ITH). Both of these have jet service from multiple airlines. Both Syracuse and Ithaca airports are approximately one hour by car from Binghamton.

Travel By Bus:

Shortline Bus Company and Greyhound offer regular bus service from New York City's Port Authority Bus Terminal to Binghamton. The travel time is approximately 3.5 hours. 

Travel By Car:

Travel time by car from New York City or Philadelphia is approximately 3 hours; from Boston approximately 4.5 hours, and from Washington D.C. approximately 5 hours.

Hotel

The official hotel for Frontiers of Prevention is the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel, located in downtown Binghamton:

DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel Website
Phone number: (+1) 607.722.7575.
Address: 225 Water Street, Binghamton, New York 13901.

Frontiers of Prevention Program

Note: Unless otherwise indicated, all events take place at the University Downtown
Center (UDC), Room 220.

Friday, April 14

8:30 AM - 9:00 AM Registration and Breakfast
9:00 AM - 9:30 AM Welcome by President Harvey Stenger and Opening Remarks with Co-Directors Max Pensky and Kerry Whigham
9:30 AM - 11:00 AM

Panel 1: The Erosion and Resilience of the Prevention Norm
11:00 AM - 11:30 AM

Break and refreshments
11:30 AM - 1:00 PM

Panel 2: Expanding the Ranks of Atrocity Prevention Actors in Higher Education: The Charles E. Scheidt Faculty Fellows Program at 5 Years
1:00 PM - 2:30 PM Lunch
2:30 PM - 4:00 PM

Panel 3: Ukraine and the Transformation of International Law
5:00 PM - 7:00 PM

The Nadia Rubaii Memorial Lecture with Maria Ressa: "The Battle for Our Future"

***MAIN CAMPUS, CHAMBER HALL (Anderson Center)***

Saturday, April 15

8:30 AM - 9:00 AM Breakfast
9:00 AM - 10:30 AM

Panel 4: The Localization Agenda Comes to Atrocity Prevention: The GFA and Beyond
10:30 AM - 11:00 AM Break and refreshments
11:00 AM - 12:30 PM

Panel 5: US Initiatives on Reparations for Slavery and Its Legacies
12:30 PM - 2:00 PM Lunch
2:00 PM - 3:30 PM

Panel 6: Beyond Remembering: Sites of Memory/Sites of Conscience with Atrocity Prevention Approaches
3:30 PM - 4:00 PM Break and refreshments
4:00 PM - 5:30 PM

Panel 7: Responding to Social Media Platforms as Atrocity Drivers: A Conversation with Maria Ressa
5:30 PM - 7:00 PM Closing Reception

Technical

While this year's conference will be held as an in-person event, we will be offering a livestream option as we welcome our expanding global audience. All times displayed will be in Eastern Daylight Time (EDT). We will be sending out a link to our livestream through our Facebook, Twitter and to our subscribers on our mailing list.

Registration

Frontiers of Prevention is free to attend, and will be held as an in-person event, with an option for streaming for our international audience. If you will be able to attend the event in-person, please register by clicking the registration button below. REGISTRATION IS NOW OPEN.

Frontiers of Prevention Registration

If you are interested in attending, but are unable to physically attend the event, be sure to sign up for our Newsletter to receive a link to join a livestream of the event as we approach the date!

The Nadia Rubaii Memorial Lecture with Maria Ressa:

Maria Ressa
Maria Ressa

CEO of Rappler, Journalist, Author, Freedom Advocate and 2021 Nobel Peace Prize Winner Maria Ressa is the co-founder and CEO of Rappler.com, an online news organization in the Philippines. Maria’s courage and work on disinformation and 'fake news’ culminated in her being awarded the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of her "efforts to safeguard freedom of expression, which is a precondition for democracy and lasting peace." Her numerous awards include being named Time’s 2018 Person of the Year and listed among its 100 Most Influential People of 2019, and  its 100 most influential women of the century. She was also among BBC's 100 Women 2019, and Prospect Magazine's world's top 50 thinkers 2019. 

A journalist for over 36 years, Ressa was CNN’s bureau chief in Manila before opening and running its Jakarta bureau, where she became CNN’s lead investigative reporter focusing on terrorism. In 2005, she headed the largest news organization in the Philippines, ABS-CBN, managing more than 1,000 journalists. In 2012, she co-founded Rappler, an online news platform with an ethos of a small tech start-up, starting with a team of 12 reporters and developers. Within a year and a half, it became the Philippines’ 3rd top digital news site and remains the top digital-only news site. 

In 2019, the Philippine government filed 10 arrest warrants against Maria, followed by her arrests on multiple trumped-up charges. She was convicted of cyber-libel in June 2020 for a story she didn’t write, edit, or supervise at a time when the law she allegedly violated didn’t exist. She is out on bail pending her appeal but true to form, Ressa, vows to keep fighting.

Maria was featured in the 2020 documentary “A Thousand Cuts,” which profiles her fearless reporting on the abuses of Duterte’s presidency, while also illustrating social media’s capacity to deceive and entrench political power.

Maria is co-chair of the International Fund for Public Interest Media, part of the founding group of The Real Facebook Oversight Board – composed of 25 academics, journalists, and activists demanding reforms to protect the public sphere. She is one of 10 experts named by UN secretary general Antonio Guterres to his inaugural Internet Governance Forum Leadership Panel.

Maria authored Seeds of Terror: An Eyewitness Account of Al-Qaeda’s Newest Center of Operations in Southeast Asia and From Bin Laden to Facebook. Her new book is How to Stand Up to a Dictator: The Fight for Our Future.

Participants:
 

Elana Aquino is Peace Direct's US Executive Director, bringing over 15 years of experience in international development and peacebuilding. She worked on South Sudanese IDP return issues and as a Peace Building Program Officer. She focused on supporting locally driven women’s empowerment initiatives, recognizing women as a crucial factor in solidifying peace gains. In Kenya, she was rapidly promoted from researcher to Head of the key coordination secretariat between the government of Kenya and 17 international development agencies. She led the production of the national joint assistance strategy for Kenya, targeting her strengths: facilitation, communication strategies, supervising teams of experts, website development, research, data and risk analysis, benchmarking global best practices and nurturing partnerships. 

Aquino organized the first National Development Partnership Forum in Kenya co-chaired by the Prime Minister and the regional Head of the World Bank, with key participation from UN Agencies in the region. She is an ICAP (International Career Advancement Program) Fellow, a Fellow of the International Peace and Security Institute and a board member of Women of Color Advancing Peace, Security, and Conflict Transformation (WCAPS). 

Dina Bailey is the CEO of Mountain Top Vision, a consulting firm that generates systemic change within organizations so that they can more positively impact their communities and, so, impact the world. Dina has over 15 years of experience in formal and informal education. Before opening her consulting practice, Dina was the Director of Museum Experiences at the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center as well as the inaugural Director of Educational Strategies at the National Center for Civil and Human Rights. Dina most recently served as the Director of Methodology and Practice at the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience and she currently works as the Director of U.S. Programs for the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities. Dina is a proud board member of both the American Alliance of Museums and the Institute for Learning Innovation. Dina has been published in both formal and informal education fields and regularly serves as an adjunct professor for Johns Hopkins University’s museum studies graduate program.

Bonita Bennett has been active in the memory and museum sector for over 20 years and holds a Doctorate in Historical and Heritage Studies. She currently works as an independent consultant, with her last fulltime position having been as Director of the District Six Museum in Cape Town where she remains engaged as a research associate and as a member of its board of trustees.

David Campbell has devoted his career to research and practice in the nonprofit sector. His research addresses critical nonprofit management issues, including accountability and performance measurement; the role the Internet and social media, organizational emergence and adaptation (specifically in response to disaster); and mergers and other forms of restructuring. In addition, he has collaborated with scholars at Koç University in Turkey to study philanthropy and giving in that country. He is the co-editor of the forthcoming book Philanthropy in the Muslim World.  He regularly publishes articles about his research in The Conversation US. Campbell is a member of the editorial board for the Journal of Muslim Philanthropy and Civil Society. He has held senior management positions in major nonprofit organizations in New York City and Cleveland.

Campbell founded the Philanthropy Incubator, which uses an experiential teaching model to encourage students to incorporate giving as a regular part of their lives.  The project has received funding from the Learning by Giving Foundation, Campus Compact, and the Conrad and Virginia Klee Foundation (where he also serves on the board). The program educates and encourages philanthropy among undergraduate and graduate students. 

John Caulker founded and has led the implementation of the Fambul Tok program since its inception in 2007, initially through his position as the founding Executive Director of the Sierra Leonean human rights NGO, Forum of Conscience.  He continues his leadership of Fambul Tok as the Executive Director of Fambul Tok International – Sierra Leone.

As Executive Director of Forum of Conscience, Mr. Caulker strove to prevent recurring violence by connecting the root causes of Sierra Leone’s brutal conflict to the need for rural community participation in the national decision making process and acknowledgement of wrongdoing to victims through the reparations program.

As the national chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Working Group, Mr. Caulker pressured the government of Sierra Leone to implement the recommendations of the TRC’s 2004 report. As part of this effort to raise awareness and guarantee protection for the rights of victims of the conflict, Mr. Caulker also mediated an agreement that allows members of the Amputees and War Wounded Association to participate in the TRC and Special Court process.

Omar Eaton-Martinez is the Senior Vice President for Historic Sites at the National Trust for Historic Preservation, where he leads the preservation, interpretation, and overall stewardship of 28 historic sites across the country to tell the full American story. 

He has had leading roles in racial equity organizations like Museums and Race: Transformation and Justice, Museum Hue as well as a part of the Museum as Site for Social Action project. Omar participated as an American Alliance of Museums Diversity, Equity, Accessibility, Inclusion (DEAI) Senior Fellow, who is dedicated to diversifying museum boards. Additionally, he is a gubernatorial appointee to the Maryland Lynching Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the first commission of its kind in the country. His research interests are Afro Latinx identity in museum exhibitions, Diversity and Inclusion in museums and cultural institutions, and Hip Hop history, culture and education. Moreover, he has supported public history projects centering blackness in Puerto Rico.

Tibi Galis has been the Executive Director of the Auschwitz Institute for the Prevention of Genocide and Mass Atrocities since 2006. Before joining AIPG, Dr. Galis worked as an Associate Researcher for the Parliament of the United Kingdom, helping develop the country’s position on the UN Special Adviser on the Prevention of Genocide. He also served as rapporteur for the Swedish government at the 2004 Stockholm International Forum on the Prevention of Genocide. Dr. Galis earned a Ph.D. from the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Clark University, with a focus on transitional justice. He also holds an M.A. in International Politics and Political Development from the University of Manchester and a B.A. in Law and Political Science from Babes-Bolyai University in Romania, his native country.

Liz Hume is the Executive Director at the Alliance for Peacebuilding. She is an international lawyer and a conflict and peacebuilding expert with more than 25 years of experience in senior leadership positions in bilateral, multilateral institutions and NGOs overseeing sizeable programs in conflict-affected and fragile states. She also has experience advocating and educating on critical game-changing development policies and has published extensively. Liz holds a BA from Boston College, a JD from Vermont Law School, and a MA in Negotiation, Conflict Resolution and Peacebuilding from California State University, Dominguez Hills. 

Azeem Ibrahim OBE is the Director of Special Initiatives at the Newlines Institute for Strategy and Policy in Washington DC, Research Professor at the Strategic Studies Institute US Army War College and a columnist at Foreign Policy Magazine. He received his PhD from the University of Cambridge after which he completed fellowships at the universities of Oxford, Harvard and Yale.

Dr. Ibrahim is the author of three seminal books: “Authoritarian Century: Omens of a Post-Liberal Order”, (Hurst: 2022),“The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide”, (Hurst 2016) and “Radical Origins: Why We Are Losing the War Against Islamic Extremism” (Pegasus 2017).

In 2019 he received the International Association of Genocide Scholars Award for his research on the Rohingya genocide; and in 2022, Dr Ibrahim was awarded an OBE (Officer of the Order of the British Empire) by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, for his services to foreign policy.

Dmytro Koval is an Associate professor at the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, Legal Director at Truth Hounds, and a member of the international advisory council of the Prosecutor’s General Office of Ukraine. 

Dmytro graduated from Odessa Law Academy. He holds a Ph.D. in international law. Dmytro was a research fellow at Stanford University, Central European University, Jagiellonian University, and the Graduate School for Social Research of the Polish Academy of Science. He served as a member of the Ministry of Justice Expert Committee on International Humanitarian Law Implementation. He worked on IHL and IHRL issues in Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, China, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Ukraine. He also advised the Council of Europe, the European Parliament, UNESCO, the Ukrainian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Ministry of Culture, the Prosecutor General’s Office, and Ukrainian MPs on different aspects of international law. Since 2021 Dmytro represents Ukraine in the UNESCO Protocol 1999 Committee. Dmytro is a member of the board of the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize winner Center for Civil Liberties. He is the UNESCO consultant who advises the organization on the implementation of The Hague Convention of 1954 and its Second Protocol of 1999.

Adam Laats is Professor of Education and History at Binghamton University. He earned his PhD in 2006 in US History at the University of Wisconsin—Madison and is a former postdoctoral fellow with the National Academy of Education. Before coming to Binghamton, he taught middle-school and high-school for ten years in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He studies the history of US education, including the history of battles over curriculum in science, history, and literature. His previous books include Creationism USA (Oxford University Press, 2020), Fundamentalist U: Keeping the Faith in American Higher Education (Oxford University Press, 2018), and The Other School Reformers: Conservative Activism in American Education (Harvard University Press, 2015). He is currently completing a book about the origins of public education in the US. He offers comment about history and education in the Washington Post, The Atlantic, Slate, Nature, and the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Sokkoeun Man is Executive Director of the Youth for Peace in Cambodia. He completed a Master's degree in Education Management and Planning at the Royal University of Phnom Penh in 2015 and a Master's degree in Applied Conflict Transformation at Panhasastra University, the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies (CPCS) in 2022.  Sokkoeun has over 15 years of practical experience in peacebuilding, leadership, memorialization, and reconciliation with young people and Khmer Rouge survivors.  He has actively participated in reconciliation and memory work through education and artwork, creating space for dialogue between youth and victim-survivors, in addition to coordinating and establishing a teacher guidebook to integrate the Democratic Kampuchea Historical Mass Killing Sites into Cambodia's Public Education System.

Lucas Massuco is the coordinator of the Human Rights Office at the Faculty of Political Science and International Relations at the National University of Rosario, Argentina. He holds a Master's degree in Public Policy Evaluation from the University of Entre Ríos. His main work is carried out at Rosario's Memory Museum as Director since 2022. Prior to this position, he held the role of the Museum’s institutional coordinator. He also participated in the coordination of the expansion and restoration project of the Argentine Library.

Saeideh Mirghorbani is an Assistant Professor of Business Analytics and Operations and a former Charles E. Scheidt Faculty Fellow in atrocity prevention at Binghamton University. She received her Ph.D. in Management Science from the University of Alabama in 2018 and her master's and bachelor's from Allameh Tabatabei University in 2010 and 2008, respectively.

Dr. Mirghorbani has conducted research on the applications of management science and operations management in healthcare systems. The results of her research studies have been published in peer-reviewed journals and Forbes.com. She has presented her work on healthcare systems at national and international conferences such as INFORMS Annual and INFORMS Healthcare meetings in Rotterdam. In addition to the healthcare system, she has studied the applications of operations management and business analytics in the fight for social justice. In collaboration with scholars from Binghamton University, she has conducted research projects on racial and gender disparity in food insecurity and other social issues.

Anton Moiseienko is a Lecturer in Law at the Australian National University. His work focuses on transnational crime, economic crime and cybercrime, as well as legal and policy aspects of targeted sanctions. He is the author of Corruption and Targeted Sanctions, a monograph on the legal and policy implications of ‘Magnitsky’ laws. Anton was previously a Research Fellow at the Centre for Financial Crime and Security Studies of the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI), a UK defence and security think-tank.

Giovanna Montenegro is an Associate Professor of Comparative Literature at Binghamton University. Her interests primarily focus on colonialism in Latin America and the Caribbean which draw on her interdisciplinary interests in German Studies, Cartography, Ecocriticism and Visual Culture. She has also published on the transatlantic Avant-Garde.

Her book German Conquistadors in Venezuela:  The Welsers’ Colony, Racialized Capitalism, and Cultural Memory is forthcoming from University of Notre Dame Press. She is currently working on a second book project on the Guianas.

Her research has been supported by a number of external fellowships including Fulbright, the Newberry Library, the Herzog August Bibliothek, the Omohundro Institute, and the American Association of University Women. In 2019 she received the Latin American Studies Association-Venezuela Section- Best Article- Humanities prize for “The Welser Phantom”: Apparitions of the Welser Venezuela Colony in Nineteenth and Twentieth-century German Cultural Memory.”

Mary Muscari is a Professor in the Decker School of Nursing. She is nationally certified as a pediatric nurse practitioner, psychiatric clinical specialist and forensic nursing clinical specialist. She is also a criminologist. She combines her unique educational background with more than 40 year of experience in working with a variety of forensic clients, victims and perpetrators, adults and children.

She has authored/co-authored 18 books including Pediatric Nursing Review (four editions, the latest in 2015, Lippincott), Quick Reference to Child and Adolescent Forensics (2010, Springer), Quick Reference to Adult and Older Adult Forensics (2010, Springer, AJN Book of the Year Winner), Child Behavioral and Parenting Challenges for Advanced Practice Nurses (2016, Springer); and seven consumer books including: Everything Parents Guide to Raising Adolescent Girls, Everything Parents Guide to Raising Adolescent Boys (both 2008, Adams Media); Let Kids be Kids: Rescuing Childhood (2006), Not My Kid: 21 Steps to Raising a Non-Violent Kid (2002) and Not My Kid 2: Protecting Your Children from the 21 Threats of the 21st Century (2004) (all from University of Scranton Press).

Savita Pawnday is the Executive Director of the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect. Ms. Pawnday is a leading expert on R2P and atrocity prevention. Over the last decade, she has worked extensively with and advised a wide range of governments and the United Nations on how to prevent and respond to mass atrocities. Ms. Pawnday has routinely convened Foreign Ministers and other high level policy makers on R2P to mobilize action to protect populations from atrocity crimes. In 2010, Ms. Pawnday was instrumental in conceptualizing and launching the Global Network of R2P Focal Points. Now with over 60 countries, the Global Network of R2P Focal Points is the largest network of senior government officials of its kind. She is also a founding Steering Group member of the Global Action Against Mass Atrocity Crimes (GAAMAC).

Ms. Pawnday has led Global Centre’s work on UN peacekeeping, international justice mechanisms, Women, Peace and Security, and advocacy on specific country situations where populations are at risk of atrocities, such as Syria, Myanmar, South Sudan, Yemen and Ethiopia. She has written and published extensively on R2P and atrocity prevention. Ms. Pawnday is regularly invited by governments, the United Nations, NGOs, academic institutions, and other international multilateral organizations from around the globe to speak on R2P.

Rochell Sanders Prater is the Executive Director of the GU272 Descendants Association and serves on the Board of the Descendants Truth and Reconciliation Foundation.

Rochell’s journey in the social inclusion space began in response to the police shooting of Timothy Thomas and the Cincinnati riots in the Spring of 2001.  Her attendance at a symposium highlighting the South Africa Truth and Reconciliation Commission deepened her passion for this work.  Her experience includes the creation of a small church group curriculum,  One Blood: A Path to Cultural Oneness, and participation in the People's Institute for Survival and Beyond's Undoing Racism workshop. Rochell also served as a  steering committee member for the Intercommunity Justice and Peace Center (IJPC) - Rethinking Racism workshop.  It was these experiences that prepared her to take action when in April 2016, she discovered that her great-grandfather 3-year-old Jackson “Jack” Hawkins was one of 272 enslaved people sold by Maryland Jesuits in 1838 to keep Georgetown College open. In April 2017, she witnessed Georgetown's Mulledy Hall be renamed after her 3X great-grandfather Isaac Hawkins Hall.

Rochell earned an MS in Business Management from Indiana Wesleyan, and a BS in Mechanical Engineering from Southern University A & M, of which GU272 Descendant John Sebastian Jones was an initial founder and the first Dean.

Ambassador Donald Steinberg serves as expert advisor to USAID, focusing on locally-led development, re-aligning U.S. policies with the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, and diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility.  He is also Executive Director of Mobilizing Men as Partners for Women, Peace, and Security (MAWPS), which supports women’s leadership in global security issues and peace processes in two dozen countries worldwide.  

In four decades of public service, he was Deputy Administrator at the USAID under the Obama administration, Ambassador to Angola, Director of the State Department Joint Policy Council, White House Deputy Press Secretary, NSC Senior Director for Africa, Special Haiti Coordinator, Senior Fellow at U.S. Institute of Peace, the President’s Special Representative for Global Humanitarian Demining, and a founding member of the White House Atrocity Prevention Board.  

In the civil society arena, he served as President of World Learning, Deputy President of International Crisis Group, board co-chair of the Women’s Refugee Commission, visiting professor at Dartmouth University, and a member of the UN Secretary General’s Civil Society Advisory Group for Women, Peace and Security.  He holds master’s degrees in economics from the University of Toronto and in journalism from Columbia University, and a bachelor’s degree from Reed College.

Jennifer Trahan is a Professor at New York University's Center for Global Affairs where she directs the Concentration in International Law and Human Rights. She also serves as Convenor of the Global Institute for the Prevention of Aggression. She is a leading expert on topics of international law, international justice, and international criminal tribunals.  She serves as one of the US representatives to the Use of Force Committee of the International Law Association and holds various positions with the American Branch. She also served on the Council of Advisers on the Application of the Rome Statute to Cyberwarfare. She additionally is part of a working group advising Ukraine and others on the Special Tribunal for the Crime of Aggression. Her book, “Legal Limits to Security Council Veto Power in the Face of Atrocity Crimes” (Cambridge University Press 2020) was awarded the “2020 ABILA Book of the Year Award” by the American Branch of the International Law Association.

Charlotte Trottier studied philosophy and cultural studies at the University of Leipzig, where she also worked as a research assistant until September 2021. In addition to aspects of the culture of commemoration and remembrance, her academic focus lies in political philosophy and legal philosophy as well as legal, migration and Jewish (ideal) history of the modern age. Since October 2021 she has been doing a scientific internship, in which she is working on the project for the special exhibition "Perpetrators and those involved in the crime in the context of the Bergen-Belsen concentration and prisoner of war camp".

Ernesto Verdeja is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Notre Dame. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in political science (political theory) from the New School for Social Research in New York City. His research has focused on large-scale political violence (genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity), transitional justice, forgiveness and reconciliation, and trials, truth commissions, apologies, and reparations. Other interests include contemporary political theory, particularly democratic and critical theory, the Frankfurt School, and feminism.
Verdeja is the author of Unchopping a Tree: Reconciliation in the Aftermath of Political Violence (Temple University Press, 2009). He is currently the Executive Director of the Institute for the Study of Genocide, a non-profit founded in 1982 to promote research and policy analysis on the causes and prevention of genocide and political violence. He also has worked on human rights at the International Center for Transitional Justice and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights (now Human Rights First).

Anna Vyshniakova is a legal analyst with a specialisation crimes related to propaganda and the head of a newly created NGO “LingvaLexa”. The NGO is aimed to work on the research of the impact of propaganda and assist the legal authorities in ensuring accountability for speech crimes, including incitement to genocide.

After the full-scale Russian invasion, Anna has been participating in missions to the war zone that were aimed at working with the evidence of looting, trafficking, vandalization and destruction of Ukrainian cultural heritage; in the development of numerous training sessions on international criminal and humanitarian law and in the recording, documentation and achieving war crimes committed in Ukraine.

Anna was exploring the impact of grave crimes on society in a long-term perspective while doing research and volunteering in a refugee camp in Ghana, studying the history of mass atrocities in Cambodia and living at the West Bank. She has also been working as the Special Advisor to the Minister of Foreign affairs on the issues of xenophobia.

Nicole Widdersheim is the Deputy Washington Director at Human Rights Watch. She recently was the Senior Policy Advisor for the Center for the Prevention of Genocide at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. Prior, she was the Director for African Affairs at the National Security Council covering the Sudans and Central Africa. Before that, Nicole was the Atrocity Prevention Focal Point and Senior Human Rights Advisor at USAID where she managed the multimillion dollar Human Rights Grants Program and provided technical guidance to USAID field missions worldwide. From 2010 to 2013, Nicole served as the USAID Office of Transition Initiative (OTI) Country Representative in Cote d’Ivoire, Mali, and Haiti. As the head of the OTI Haiti program after the earthquake, Nicole managed a $153+ million dollar recovery and stability program. She was also with USAID in Darfur, Sudan in 2005 as a Protection Officer to combat violence against women and develop USG policy on the genocide.